


the draw

by naimeria



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Hurt/Comfort, Mind Control, Other, but knowing me, i doubt it, ish, lets just say the're my ot5, might include some pairings later on
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-22 14:43:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9612050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naimeria/pseuds/naimeria
Summary: The union is more surreal, they find, as they blast and tear through the consuming fleet. Maybe it’s the exhaustion, or the desperation, but their joined consciousness feels more like a pressure building behind their eyes. Lance grits his teeth, Hunk bows his head, Keith hunches his shoulders, Pidge narrows her eyes. Shiro closes his, focuses on his lion, and tries not to panic when he thinks he sees a new pair of eyes staring back.Or: the one where Zarkon can take full control of the black lion, and does so with disastrous result.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this diverges from canon near the s1 finale. zarkon is doing his track-by-black-lion shtick, and the timeline starts after their second wormhole jump.

 

The Castle of Lions feels weary. The atrium is quiet, and the five paladins unintentionally move as one unit, a heaviness weighing down their shoulders and dragging their feet along pristine synthetic metal. Their steps are almost in sync as they all make for the couches that are set into the floor.

“I might not move for a week.” Lance’s head hangs back as far as it can. Keith is at his side, thighs unnoticably flush, and he mirrors his posture.

Pidge sees them and wonders at the nature of their link, if the five of them are going to pick up on subconscious habits (will she start brushing her hair from bottom to top like Keith does, will she start randomly craving peanut butter like Shiro does, will she keep her nails as perfectly manicured as Hunk does), then realizes she’s actually too tired to care. Hunk lists into her orbit, and their arms touch. She loops hers through his because she can, and they flop onto the cushions in a pile of limbs. She winds up half in Keith’s lap.

Shiro stays standing, looking tired but wound tight, a cord resisting the urge to snap. “I don’t trust it,” Shiro says, a brief look into his constant vigilance. Keith leans forward, aiming to put his elbows on his knees, but winds up resting one of them on Pidge’s hip.

“Take it while you can,” he says. It’s softer than usual, and when he pulls this tone out they’ve noticed it’s exclusively for their leader.

“Yeah, dude,” Hunk mumbles into the arm that’s thrown over his face. “No way they’ll be back so soon.”

Lance reaches behind Keith and Pidge and smacks Hunk’s shoulder. “Dude, there’s no wood to knock on, cut that out!” Keith looks confused, though if it’s because of the euphemism going clear over his head, or how he ended up in the middle of the paladin pile, none of them could say.

Allura approaches them, eyes dull but body strong. “Rest while you can.”

“You should do the same, Princess,” Coran adds, and even he looks a little grey. “I’ll keep an-”

The proximity alarm screams at them from overhead, and they all go taut. They’re on their feet in a blink, the reaction a reflex by now, and Lance smacks Hunk again, on the arm this time. “Sorry,” Hunk says, and it’s the beaten down tone that has Shiro putting his hand on his shoulder.

“Let’s just get to our lions.”

  


They don't form Voltron right away. The lions are fierce as ever, their movements quick and precise, but it doesn’t take long for them to notice that something is different. Red and green are arching wide while yellow goes low and blue blocks his tail, but black is trailing behind. Shiro closes his eyes and _looks_ , trying to see through his lion’s eyes, but it’s hazy, like looking through a fogged window. She’s slowing down as fighters fly around them, the other lions darting in to cover him.

“Shiro?” It's Pidge, looking at him with furrowed brows. “Is everything okay?”

The black lion slices into one of the cruisers, jawblades rending metal like a knife through butter, and the controls shake in his hands. He pushes with mind and muscle, and feels sweat bead at his temples.

“I don't know.” He can't lie to them. Shiro feels the concern, the unease, the alarm from all four of them. At the base of his neck, where he usually feels her rumbling purr, there's nothing, like reaching into a lake as it starts to freeze over.

“Let's try to form up. I'll be fine.”

This might be his fault. He will _not_ bring down their unified front.

His lion says nothing, and the ice spreads.

Even though their link feels taut with tension, they’re still unified, moving as one entity. The fighters go down in bright flashes, barely a cumberance, but whereas the lions normally push to fuse, like being apart is killing them, they don’t come close now.

“Your readouts are slower than usual.” Pidge sounds clipped, and her eyes are narrowed as she looks at her display, the black lion an equation she can’t solve.

Allura confirms the data the green lion’s been picking up, and they all slow to find the cause.

“It’s fine,” Shiro says, and the half-lie sears through their bond like a brand. Keith scowls, and Hunk’s brows furrow.

“You sure about that?” Lance asks.

Shiro tries to answer, but the jawblade clenched in his lion’s jaws suddenly fades into cosmic dust. “Wha-”

The next few seconds feel like drowning. He can’t speak, can only watch the controls lock up, can only gape at the display as she’s muted, a hood thrown over his head, nose, mouth.

The others are calling for him, but all he sees is metal, purple and foul. The scar that stretches from temple to jaw fills his mind’s eye, impossibly red eyes laughing at him. And the black lion, she growls once, ear drums rattling in his head, before she’s silenced.

Suddenly, all the breath rushes back into his lungs, and he collapses forward onto the control panel. “It’s Zarkon!” Shiro yells, finding his voice through his panic, a litany of _no no no no_ threatening to burst from his chest. “He has the black lion!”

They’re yelling, a cacophony of confusion and fear, and he fights against the instinct to console them with empty words. He doesn’t know what to do - he’s their leader, and he doesn’t know what to _do_. He’s reduced to a white-knuckle grip on the controls, teeth grit and eyes narrowed.

“Are you okay?” Keith sounds young and old all at once.

That one Shiro can answer. “I’m fine,” he says. “But you guys need to watch out. I don’t-” and he has to swallow the fear that’s clenching his throat like a vice, “I don’t know what he’ll do.”

She’s moving, a steady pace towards the control ship, and Shiro puts everything into asking her to _stop,_ and miraculously, she slows, then hangs in the air.

“We need to get to Zarkon,” Keith says, voice low with the promise of pain.

“We can’t, not without Voltron!” Pidge, by contrast, sounds high with panic, but her expression is focused, and her hands don’t shake.

“We’ll have to find a way,” Keith returns, and his lion bites into a fighter and throws it into a beam Lance is already firing at another. They both erupt in flames, and blue chases after red, jaws open as if to catch them in it’s grip.

“We can’t just punch our way into this one, guys,” Hunk yells, eyes wide with concern, but his lion’s gun is alight with deadly precision. “Zarkon’s a dangerous dude.”

“Yeah, one that has _control of the black lion_ ,” Lance erupts, still on Keith’s tail. They’re shredding their way through a cruiser, on their way to the main control ship. “ _How_ does he have control of the black lion?”

“Because he was it’s paladin before Shiro.”

The commlink does deathly silent. Allura’s soft cadence hangs in their cockpits, all of them gaping, and a fighter blasting Lance’s haunch breaks them from their stupor.

“ _What?_ ” Keith’s furious, eyes wide with panic. “And you didn’t think that would be _important to know?_ ”

“I can’t believe all this time-”

“Enough.” Shiro cuts Pidge off with a look, and levels it on Allura a moment later. “Now’s not the time.”

And it’s not, because Keith speeds up towards Zarkon’s ship, and suddenly the black lion is moving.

“Shiro!” It’s Lance, and his lion turns to watch as the black lion beelines for them, thrusters on full.

The black lion rushes through the void, moments harsh but _fast,_ and all Shiro can do is watch. “Stay away from me!” Shiro's warning will be in vain, he knows. His desperation scares him almost as much as the foreign feeling of his lion moving against his will, against _her_ will. “I'm not in control of her!”

He _feels_ Zarkon there, at the base of his skull, and for one sickening moment, Shiro expects his own hands to start moving too. "She's going to protect Zarkon."

“Maybe we can shake him loose.” Keith doesn’t sound angry anymore, just determined.

Shiro's panic rises to his throat, and he knows they all see it. Allura says what's lodged just beneath it. “Keith, that's too dangerous.”

“If we all shoot him-” Hunk tries for diplomacy, an impressive display of focus shielding most of his fear from view, but Keith growls in their ears, and Shiro feels it, his frustration, his impotence and his fear for Shiro, for his lion, for them all.

“No,” is all he says, and the red lion’s thrusters roar to life. The green lion shifts forward as Pidge yells after him, his name frantic on her lips, and Hunk has to rip a fighter in half that tries to swoop in from behind her. Lance stays on Keith’s tail best he can, edging to his side to keep the black lion in his sights.

“This is crazy,” Hunk says, eyes wide, and their individual fear is reverberating off of them all, amplified and sent back, like lights shining in a mirror.

And at its center is Shiro, straining at his controls and screaming as the black lion charges at red, fixed on protecting her old master. Blue leaps in between them, but it becomes clear that the black lion - Zarkon - knows he's going to defend, not attack. Claws are extended, and the black lion uses her rear feet to spin in a shocking display of speed, and gouges into blue’s belly. Lance yells, and the others yell after him as he's thrown into one of the last remaining cruisers. Yellow rushes to his aid, and green tries to take up blue’s place, but Keith overpowers their yells for concern. “See to Lance, make sure he’s okay.”

Shiro hears Keith taking command, and it sinks into his gut beside the fear. All of them, undone by his lack of control, the inability to bond strong enough with his lion. She moves beneath him, Shiro a stringless puppet, and her silence says more than she's ever said to him before. The protector in him wants to tell them to go back to the castle, to regroup, wants to make sure Lance is okay. “Please, Keith,” is all that comes.

_Please, leave. Let him take me. Don’t let me kill you._

The lions growl at one another, dark and jarring between the five of them, and then black is on them.

 

**Author's Note:**

> many thanks to [lacking](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lacking) for being a fantastic beta! 
> 
> title from the song by bastille of the same name.  
> my [tumblr](http://naimeria.tumblr.com/) if you wanna say hi.


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